Inspiration and Life
Find Freedom and Joy in Writing
Embrace your creativity the old-fashioned way
Let’s travel to the time before keyboards and computers. You may think it was long, long ago, but it was not.
The invention of the first word processor happened in 1971. For many baby boomers, that was yesterday! Those were the analog days when all most people had was pen and paper and maybe a manual typewriter, if you were fortunate
Could there be a tradeoff between the old analog ways and modern technology? Let’s do a little exploration to find out.
The analog age
There was something special about writing in the days before computers. The difference in speed is one of the more notable things, as is the ability to change and correct what you have written easily. In the old days, you could erase and perhaps use whiteout, but neither of these was helpful in editing. What you wrote often had to be rewritten or retyped to make it look decent.
I came upon the idea for this article when thinking about how technology has changed writing while journaling one morning. Using Wordstar, one of the first word processing programs in the early 80s, I saw my productivity go through the roof. Never before or since have I seen anything…
